


Mourner's Folly

by Saraste



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dark Magic, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Revenants, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 12:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21253379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Harry dies. Draco chooses to not accept that.





	Mourner's Folly

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS NOT A FLUFFY STORY. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL.
> 
> Beta-read by the incomparable [katajainen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/profile). Thank you! All remaining mistakes are my own.

That which comes back after his meddling, never should have, Draco thinks.

But it’s too late now. There is only one way back from this, the final solution, the one he should have taken right at the start, and which he now hesitates to choose, because _this… _it, it’s his responsibility now. For he had been the one to cast the incantations, to pour out his blood into the potion he’d forced down an unresponsive throat, _his_ will had brought life back where there had been none, where it had fled. Where it shouldn’t have been summoned back, no matter how much he’d been hurting.

What he’s brought back is and isn’t Harry.

There are long silences now between them. Where there once had been a comfortable quiet in the moments where words had not been needed, there is now a heavy silence laden with things unsaid… and when they converse the answers Draco gets sound hollow and the voice is wrong; it’s not the warmth and awkwardness of the Harry who had whispered naughty breathless confessions into Draco’s ear in bed, gone and lost is the cadence of Draco’s scathing wit and answering snark, gone is the banter, witty and mindless, and so missed now that it’s gone, forever lost.

The worst thing, Draco all too often thinks, is that there _is_ awareness of things being wrong, he did not resurrect a mindless husk with the body and face of the man he loves. What he brought back might not be quite the Harry he’d lost, but it’s not not him, either, and the resurrected Harry knows that there are gaps, that he isn’t the person Draco loved, _but he knows that he was_, which is maybe harder to bear for both.

Possibly worse than that is that he is still the Harry Draco loves, when those small parts shine though, little precious moments in which he is like the Harry-That-Was, and those weigh heavy in the balance when Draco contemplates… that which he doesn’t let himself even think into words. But there is the stray glance at a sharp knife, at his wand, or a potion, a gossamer of thought of undoing the incantations holding together that which once was dear, and still is... and that should have never been brought back.

And Draco _had_ known that there would be a price for this sort of Dark Magic, for meddling with the very fundamentals of the natural order of things, with life and death, and that the price would be paid, would be exacted, eventually. He had just not thought that it would mean this. Having Harry back but only not, because what Draco now has is a broken thing, a jigsaw puzzle with integral connecting pieces missing, a flawed construction that can break down at any moment if pushed too hard. What he has is a wraith, a shadow of memories, a ghost he fears to touch, who haunts the otherwise deserted halls of Malfoy Manor, where Draco’s shut himself away from the world, from censure, from Azkaban because of what he’s done.

Even so… Draco loves what he still has, this broken wraith of a man, whom he’s bound to, because he is a creator, a necromancer, and above all things, extremely foolish. Yet, are not all those who love with a passion that goes beyond the grave extremely foolish?

So, he moulders in his family home, accompanied by a Harry who stares at him, speaks little and eats less. A Harry who is alive but not living, and Draco, living but not alive. And it is torture and agony, because Draco cannot bear to touch Harry, to find out for himself if he’s really alive in the most fundamental way, because he feels like that would be the true end of everything, and it would all fall apart, all his careful self-deceptions crumbling. A fleeting thought sometimes occurs to him, a thought that he might find Harry-As-Was in the Harry-That-Is-Now and that… He doesn’t know what to think about that, if he’s brutally honest. And so, the mouldering detente continues, and they go on existing in their strained silence. Draco perseveres for the little moments, for the flashes of _his_ Harry, which he covets and locks away in his heart, guarding them like the precious gems they are.

But there comes a time, eventually, when his actions catch up with him, when there is no more denying that the man now not sleeping in his bed is not the man who’d slept in it with him, and when he has to pay the ultimate price himself, and lay to rest what he had snatched from Hades, once and for all.

That night he kisses Now-Harry for the first time since he’d come back, and he can almost believe that the last six months never happened, that Harry had not died, that there had been no resurrection, because kissing those lips still feels the same. That night, it’s no memory or revenant in his bed with him, but His Harry, even if the illusion has cracks all around its edges and he swallows back tears when he notices. But Now-Harry is attentive, loving and careful and gives Draco everything back in return, and almost makes him rethink his decision, reconsider, and think about fleeing, disappearing and starting over somewhere. Even when that would be an impossibility. Because he _knows_ what this Harry has done, and there is no thinking it away, he has been thinking away the signs he’d seen before for too long.

He’s giving them this night, the last night which is also the first, and then it’s finished. It has to be.

They share everything that night and Draco doesn’t shame himself for it. He gently cradles Harry in his arms in the early morning hours when dawn is still a long way off, watching at him sleep in the soft low light of the candles strewn around the room. Harry’s beautiful and doesn’t look like he’s wrong in any way, but Draco had seen the blood in his hands, had heard from him what he’d done, knows now how very wrong he’s been all this time, from the start of this whole cursed resurrection affair.

He murmurs a wandless spell and a candle falls over on a console table and the flame jumps greedily into the heavy curtains that had shut the world away and hidden Draco’s shameful selfishness. Draco spares the fire a fleeting glance, merely to assure himself that it takes, it’s a relief of a sort when the flame starts climbing towards the ceiling, spreading greedily as it snakes its way through the moth-eaten and dusty fabric.

It’s the beginning of the end, although the end had truly begun six months ago, so maybe it’s the beginning of acceptance. He doesn’t care, as long as it’s finished. All laid to rest.

Weeping, he looks at Harry adoringly, taking a last look, a last kiss, a last thought, before he opens his veins and lets his life trickle out, and Harry’s along with it. Because it had been Draco’s blood that had animated him, wrenched him back from where there shouldn’t have been no return, and this sacrifice can also be taken back if there is will enough. It’s such a relief that it doesn’t even hurt. The darkness comes to consume him, welcoming and warm, and then they are no more, the wizard who loved too much and his monster, consumed by unspent magic and flames.


End file.
